


My Teacher

by farrah_yondale



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), grooming mention, my feelings on claudeleth, or any of the byleth/student ships which are negative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24674209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farrah_yondale/pseuds/farrah_yondale
Summary: In a letter to his mother, Claude lets on that Byleth sometimes flirts with her students. Mama Riegan flies over to Fodlan and beats the shit out of her.
Comments: 29
Kudos: 112





	My Teacher

**Author's Note:**

> Whew. So I know there's been some discussion over the nature of Byleth/student ships and I'm not really here to debate that. I've been sitting on this fic for a few months because I've just been weighing whether it's really going to help anyone to post this vs. will this do more harm than good?
> 
> Obviously, a topic like this is pretty heavy and I think it would probably merit a deeper exploration and something more serious than a one-shot fanfiction, but the only reason I'm posting a fic of this nature (and pardon me for being an idealist) is on the off-chance that this helps people understand how messed up a relationship like this would be. 
> 
> Tw for mentioned flirting from a teacher to her student. There's nothing really explicit in terms of the grooming here.
> 
> Anyway, I leave myself to the dogs.

_Dear Mama,_

_School is going fine and I’m safe, as will no doubt be the first two worries on your mind. I haven’t gotten into any trouble, surprisingly, given my knack for snooping in the library in the middle of the night, but aside from Seteth’s pressed glares, no one’s given me trouble for my unrivaled curiosity._

_Speaking of curiosity, I still can’t figure Professor Byleth out. She is a very strange woman. It’s so hard to describe her without you knowing her. If I were to compare her to someone back home, I think she’d be like Auntie Razia, always staring out into space and acting weird. I suppose it should be expected given that she’s hardly socialized in her life as a mercenary, but still! She’s our professor. I do find her fascinating, though. Lately, she’s been spending more time with me, which is only to my benefit. I want to figure her out! I do have to put up with her flirting, however, which is a joy. She’s terribly awkward about it._

Tiana von Riegan stopped reading right there and resisted the urge to crumple the letter in her hand and throw it at someone’s head. If she’d had anything less precious than her son’s writing her hand, she would have no doubt destroyed it in reflexive anger.

 _His teacher_ was flirting with him? Had Fodlan regressed to such degeneracy since she’d left? She’d always hated the damn monastery for its secrets and its questionable morals, and she’d always had her inhibitions about allowing Claude to go there for school, but this?

She wanted to set the monastery on fire.

“Tiana _, joon_ ,” her husband’s voice rang out. “What’s the matter?”

King Arash entered her field of vision and she turned to meet him. His hair and long beard had the sheen they took to after he’d rubbed coconut oil into them, and his salwar and kamiz were wrinkled from sleep. Despite all that, he still looked handsome, and Tiana might have admired him if she weren’t currently thinking of all the ways she could de-stabilize the entirety of Fodlan in under twenty-four hours.

She shoved the letter into his hands and stared angrily out the window instead.

“This teacher…” Arash started, still staring at the writing in the letter. “She’s only a few years older than Claude, isn’t she?” For a brief second, Tiana was about to scream at him in a frenzy, assuming his question was meant as an excuse for her. _Who cared if she was around Claude’s age? It was still wrong!_ But Arash went on, “Perhaps that’s why Claude hasn’t realized it’s inappropriate.”

Probably. Tiana huffed. She didn’t care about whether Claude had realized or not because she was about to fly over to Fodlan bring _her_ solution to the monastery either way.

She voiced as much.

At first, she thought Arash might stop her. As excessive as her husband could be sometimes, it was usually Tiana who had to be reined it. After all, she’d been the one to beat up Claude’s weapons instructor (a fact Claude would never let her forget).

But Arash handed the letter back to her, hand shaking and sighed, “Go.”

No one said anything to the woman flying on wyvern over the mountains. Holst hadn’t been informed, and frankly, Tiana didn’t care to let him know. If he tried to stop her, she throw _him_ back over the other side of the mountains, political implications be damned.

But no one tried to stop her. Fodlan was ignorant of many things, but not of a mother’s unstoppable rage. No one suspected her of a spy or an assassin, because she was hardly acting inconspicuous. And as much as the people of Fodlan feared the might of the Almyran army, they still didn’t suspect the country of using one-person armies at this point.

So Tiana flew and flew, and only stopped once on her way to let her wyvern drink water. And flew, and arrived at the monastery by dawn.

Security was surprisingly tight. The gate into the monastery had always been easy to sneak past, but it seemed her monastery days wouldn’t be much useful to her here. Had the place finally started to care about its students? Or had Claude exaggerated his safety?

“Lady von Riegan!” She’d been recognized. A pain, but not a detriment to her goal. One of the soldiers at the gate, apparently stupid enough to attempt stopping an angry mother, ran in front of her. “Please! You can’t—”

“Out of my way, kid,” she snapped, shoving him to the ground. She continued her march through the marketplace, down the hallway and—

“Mama!”

Claude was hugging her around the shoulders before she could even recognize him. Her anger simmered to a calm, and she smiled. He leaned back to look at her face, not letting go. Tiana saw a young girl tailing after him, short, with white hair.

“Is this your mom, Claude?” she asked.

“Hello,” Tiana replied, delighted. “You must be Lysithea.”

Lysithea’s eyes brightened, just as delighted. She bounced up and down excitedly. “How did you know?”

“Claude has talked a lot about you in letters. And I recognized you from House Ordelia. You look exactly like your mother.”

“Really?” Lysithea replied.

Tiana laughed. “You two don’t have class right now?”

“Not for another hour,” Claude replied, finally letting go. “But what are you doing here, Mama?”

Tiana’s rage surfaced back up into her mind. Goddess, she was going to kill that Byleth woman. She unfurled Claude’s letter and pointed to the paragraph that mentioned her flirting. “Is this true?” she asked.

Claude folded his hands behind his head. Ah, that was the habit he took to when he felt uncomfortable but didn’t want it to show. She assumed it had been his habit lately, because Goddess forbid her son think he could ever hide anything from her. “Flirting? Well, yeah,” Claude answered casually. (Which only made Tiana shake even more with rage. _Who thought this was okay?_ ) “She does that with a lot of students.”

Tiana, if possible, turned even redder.

“She doesn’t with me,” Lysithea said, clinging to Claude’s arm when he finally let them down. It was only thing Lysithea could have said that didn’t have Tiana tearing up the monastery with her bare hands currently.

“It’s a good thing,” Tiana managed to say through gritted teeth. She hadn’t meant to scare the children of all people, but it had come out clearly angry, and Lysithea was clinging to Claude. She’d apologize later. “Where is Professor Byleth?”

“In the greenhouse, I think—wait, Mama, what are you planning to do?” he asked when she sauntered off towards the greenhouse.

Whatever Claude or anyone said to Tiana, she couldn’t have repeated. She had no idea. Her mind was so focused on what she’d do to Byleth that there was no space for anything else. She reached the greenhouse and saw a woman with dark hair bent over the flowerbeds, tending to the plants.

“Are you professor Byleth?” Tiana asked her.

Byleth stood, her face neutral and calm. “That’s me,” she said in a monotone.

Tiana didn’t wait for a greeting or a pause or anything that might indicate civility. Tiana reached her in a few easy strides and grabbed Byleth by the hair, dragging her forcefully out of the greenhouse and dropping her to the ground in front of her like a sack of flour.

She ignored the crowd of astonished students around her and kicked Byleth in the gut.

“You do _not_ flirt with your students!” Tiana screeched, kicking her. “Do you hear me?”

Byleth curled over on her belly, pushing herself to her elbows and knees. A thin stream of blood ran from her nose to the tiled floor of the monastery. Tiana kicked her in the chest and watched her flail to the floor. For a good fifteen minutes, Tiana went on in delighted violence, until a few of the teachers came scurrying to check the commotion.

One of them she recognized as Seteth from her school days. The other was a blonde woman, dressed in a horribly revealing outfit. Who let a teacher dress like that in front of teenage students?

“Tiana!” Seteth cried out, holding her back by an arm. The other teacher went for the other one, and both of them pulled her off Byleth. “Tiana, please stop!”

Tiana knew it was over now and let them pull her back without much of a fuss. Once it was clear she had no intention of continuing her assault on Byleth, Seteth let her go.

“What is going on, Tiana?” he snapped, clearly disconcerted by her unexpected violence.

Tiana spat on the floor beside Byleth. “You should pay more attention to what your teachers are doing with their students!” She shoved her face to meet Seteth’s, who shrunk back. “This behavior is unacceptable!”

She had half a mind to announce who her husband was. Half a mind to terrorize them with the idea of Almyra’s military might, that she could end this entire monastery and whatever insane operations went on under its roof with one word.

But she held her breath and kept quiet. She did this for Claude, and she would not ruin his life or his dreams like that. Tiana adjusted the sleeve of her tunic and stomped off.

The inklings of embarrassment were beginning to worm their way into Tiana’s mind. She had to speak to Claude, hurry up and go home, before she started acting stupidly apologetic. She knocked on the door of Claude’s room.

“Come in.”

The door swung open with a creak. Claude sat on the bed with his legs hanging over the side, hands in his lap, oddly stiff. A cursory glance across his room and it was definitely _his_ room. A complete mess. Books hurriedly piled in a corner, as if his own mother wouldn’t have known they had been strewn over the floor a few minutes prior. Other objects all shoved into corners and piles to make the place look neater.

“Your room is a mess,” she teased with a smile.

“Did I do something wrong?” Claude burst out.

All her teasing went out the window. She swooped down to the edge of his bed, at his feet and held his hands in hers. “No,” she soothed. “No, no, _joon_ , you did nothing wrong. She was flirting with you. She was wrong.”

“But she’s around our age.”

“It doesn’t matter. She’s your _teacher_. It isn’t appropriate.” She wouldn’t mention the age difference between them. Four years wasn’t a huge gap as adults, but as teenagers? Claude wouldn’t respond well to that, however, assuming her mention of age meant she was putting him down. As long as he understood the nature of their relationship was inappropriate. He’d understand that by himself in time.

“But I was flirting with her, too.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’re her student. It’s her responsibility to create those boundaries.”

Claude squeezed the fabric of his pant legs. “I guess.”

“Maybe I went overboard.” Okay. She certainly had gone overboard. “But you know how I am. And I’m sure you know by now how awful this place really is. This school does nothing to protect any of you.”

“Yeah.” Claude swallowed. “I know. But I have to stay here so I can fulfill my dreams.”

Tiana caressed his cheek. “That’s my son. Always enduring suffering for the sake of others.”

Claude leaned his face into her hand. She felt his tears, wet and hot against her palm, but he didn’t cry.

“I’m sorry if I’ve made your situation more difficult. But I wanted to make sure she knew it was wrong and that there’d be consequences.”

“It’s okay, Mama.” He leaned out of her hand and sniffed. “At least I’ll be the center of attention for the next two weeks.”

Tiana threw her head back in a laugh and he smiled sheepishly. She hugged him tight and he hugged her back.

“Are you leaving now, Mama?” Claude asked when they parted.

“Yes, I have to get back.” But she didn’t want to. _Goddess_ , she didn’t want to. She wanted to stay with her son and caress his head every morning like she used to. The worst part of all this was adding another goodbye between them. “But know, Khalid _joon_ , I’m always here for you. If you need anything, I’ll come flying here in a heartbeat. If you want to come home, you can always come home.”

Claude smiled. “I know.”


End file.
